September 2018 MMA News Archive

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Bellator action resumed Friday with Bellator 205, which took place at CenturyLink Arena in Boise, Idaho. The main card aired on Paramount and streamed on DAZN following prelims on MMAjunkie.
One of the organization’s top prospects was the shining light on the card. A.J. McKee (12-0 MMA, 12-0 BMMA) remained undefeated when he scored his fastest win to date with a 69-second knockout of John Teixeira (21-4-2 MMA, 4-3 BMMA).

It’s well known that former UFC champion Matt Hughes is lucky simply to be alive.
Hughes was involved in a tragic accident when a pick-up he was driving was hit by a train. Though he teetered on the edge of death, Hughes somehow won the biggest fight of his life, and has slowly been working on his recovery.

Thiago Santos and Eryk Anders earned their money the hard way on Saturday night.
The light heavyweight duo put on a wild slugfest in the main event of UFC Sao Paulo, battering each other for three rounds before the bout was waved off in Santos’ favor at the end of the third.
It came as little surprise, then, that Santos and Anders earned Fight of the Night on the evening. Each competitor will take home an extra $50,000.

Valentina Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk will do battle for the vacant UFC women’s flyweight title at UFC 231 in Toronto.
UFC officials announced the fight on Thursday night.
For Shevchenko (15-3), a multiple-time Muay Thai champion, this will be her second opportunity to claim the UFC’s 125-pound title. She was initially scheduled to challenge former champion Nicco Montaño for her belt in the co-main event of UFC 228 earlier this month. However, Montaño was forced out of the bout the day before their title fight. As a result, Shevchenko was pulled from the card entirely while Montaño was stripped of her title.

Although it may not be under the UFC banner, Friday night’s bantamweight title bout at TKO 44 has all the makings of a UFC matchup.
Jesse Arnett (15-4) will defend his TKO bantamweight title for the second time, while also looking to stretch his current win streak to 13-straight, versus the undefeated American Nathan Maness (9-0).

Just six days before the show, UFC Fight Night 137 has had another change to its main event.
Jimi Manuwa (17-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) is out of the light heavyweight headliner against Thiago “Marreta” Santos (18-6 MMA, 10-5 UFC) in Brazil. But stepping in on short notice for Manuwa will be Eryk Anders (11-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC), multiple people with knowledge of the new booking today told MMAjunkie.
UFC officials have not yet made a formal announcement of the change for the card, which takes place Saturday at Ibirapuera Gymnasium in Sao Paulo. The main card airs on FS1 following prelims on FS2 and UFC Fight Pass.

Today’s UFC Fight Night 136 event drew an announced attendance of 22,603 fans for a live gate of $1.84 million.
The attendance number in Moscow, according to UFC officials was the fifth-largest crowd in the promotion’s history and the largest MMA event ever in Russia. It was the UFC’s debut in Russia.
UFC officials announced the figures following the event, which MMAjunkie attended.

After a failed attempted on the scales during his last time out at UFC 226, The Ultimate Fighter season 15 winner Michael Chiesa is changing divisions.
Although he immediately stated after missing the lightweight mark for his last fight, Chiesa is actually going through with his plan to move up to 170-pounds as was confirmed to ESPN.
For his ideal UFC welterweight debut, Chiesa hopes to get onto UFC 232 on December 29 where he would like to face the former UFC interim and WEC welterweight champion Carlos Condit. The fight has apparently been discussed, however, Condit’s team doesn’t have any interest in the matchup despite wanting to return around the same time as Chiesa.

Aleksei Oleinik, Jan Blachowicz, Magomed Ankalaev and Petr Yan each earned $50,000 bonuses for their performances at today’s UFC Fight Night 136 event.
Oleinik, Blachowicz and Ankalaeveach each won “Performance of the Night” honors. Yan earned the “Fight of the Night” for his win over Jin Soo Son, but Son was ineligible for the bonus because he missed weight.
UFC officials announced the winners following the event, which MMAjunkie attended.

ONE Championship will be in Bangkok, Thailand on October 6, 2018 for “ONE: Kingdom of Heroes.” One of the bouts on the fight card is between Shinya “Tobikan Judan” Aoki, 35, of Japan and Ev “E.T.” Ting, 29, of New Zealand and Malaysia.
Aoki and Ting will compete in the lightweight division at “ONE: Kingdom of Heroes.” The winner will earn a shot at the ONE Lightweight World Championship.
Currently reigning as the ONE Lightweight World Champion is Martin “The Situ-Asian” Nguyen, 29, of Australia and Vietnam, who also holds the ONE Featherweight World Championship title, which he has successfully defended once. For the first time, he will defend his ONE Lightweight World Champion title in Tokyo, Japan in 2019.

Former UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos will reportedly take on contender Kamaru Usman in November.
An intriguing welterweight pairing is reportedly headed to Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to Combate, former UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos is set to square off against one of the division’s top contenders, Kamaru Usman, at the The Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale main event.

After pulling out of Bellator 207 due to an undisclosed injury, Brennan Ward has decided to retire from MMA competition.
MMAjunkie today learned from a Bellator official that Ward (14-6 MMA, 9-6 BMMA) has informed the promotion of his intent to hang up his gloves from the sport.
Ward was scheduled to fight Andre Fialho at Bellator 207 in October, but had to withdraw over the weekend. Ward hasn’t fought since August 2017, and apparently the latest setback was the final straw.

Two more bouts have been added to the UFC Moncton lineup, as Chris Fishgold will square off against Calvin Kattar at featherweight, while Te’Jovan Edwards will face Don Madge at lightweight on Oct. 27.
The Las Vegas-based promotion recently announced the pairings. UFC Fight Night 138 takes place at SMG Moncton in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and is headlined by a light heavyweight showdown between Volkan Oezdemir and Anthony Smith. The card is expected to air on Fox Sports 1 following early prelims on UFC Fight Pass.
Fishgold, the Cage Warriors lightweight champion, enters his Octagon debut on a seven-fight winning streak that includes a first-round submission of Alexander Jacobsen in his most recent outing last October. Kattar, meanwhile, had a 10-fight winning streak snapped in a decision loss to Renato Carneiro at UFC 223.

Jessica Andrade gave Karolina Kowalkiewicz the fastest loss of her MMA career at UFC 228, stopping her with punches in less than two minutes Saturday night in Dallas, and believes it was enough to guarantee another shot at the strawweight belt.
Andrade says she focused on muay thai training for three months ahead of UFC 228, and it paid off with her quickest win since joining the UFC in 2013...

Tyron Woodley might not be UFC president Dana White’s favorite fighter, but he’s not so spiteful that he’ll deny the UFC welterweight champion an obvious Performance of the Night.
Woodley earned a $50,000 performance bonus for his tremendous victory over previously undefeated Darren Till on Saturday night in the main event of UFC 228. A D’Arce submission at 4:19 of the second round secured the champ’s fourth successful title defense.

There will not be a second title fight Saturday.
UFC women’s flyweight champion Nicco Montaño was hospitalized Friday morning prior to official weigh-ins and her title defense against Valentina Shevchenko has been pulled off the UFC 228 card Saturday, sources confirmed with MMA Fighting. ESPN was the first to report the news.
It remains unclear what Montaño’s condition was when she headed to the hospital, but the timing fits with something related to an illness due to weight cut.
The UFC released a statement on the matter Friday morning, making the title fight cancellation official.
“As a precautionary measure, UFC flyweight Nicco Montaño was transported to a medical facility Friday morning due to health concerns,” the statement read. “The scheduled championship bout between Montaño & Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 228 has been cancelled.”

A mammoth heavyweight showdown is set to take center stage down under.
Set to fight former UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos (19-5 MMA, 13-4 UFC) in the main event of UFC Adelaide. Combate was the first to report the news and it was confirmed by ESPN.
The confirmation ends weeks of speculation as to who may headline the card. It has been widely known that Tuivasa wanted the fight with Dos Santos, but it was uncertain as to weather the former champion would want to come to Australia for the fight.